


The Adoption Sequence - Second: Diana, Age 13

by rei_c



Series: Cannibalism Aside (Samn) [27]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Cutting, Demon Dean Winchester, Fantasizing, First Blade, Harm to Animals, Hell, I Don't Even Know, Knight(s) of Hell, Knives, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Names, Parent Dean Winchester, Parent Sam Winchester, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:08:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5965059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She doesn't hear the men first, she feels them. She can <i>smell</i> them, thinks it's her imagination because it smells exactly how she thinks home would smell: burning ozone, the electric power of blood on fire. Her throat is dry but her mouth waters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adoption Sequence - Second: Diana, Age 13

They say she's suicidal, self-loathing, because she has neat little rows of scars on her thighs. It's not that, though. It's not that she hates herself or that she feels like this is only thing she can control or that she cuts because she lets some kind of pain seep out of her along with the blood. She doesn't even do it for the pain; she's just -- fascinated by knives and razors and sharp things. She likes what happens after the initial cut. She likes the way the slice seems to set into her skin, becoming a part of her, the way that running her fingers over the scabs settles something inside of her, the way she could pick the scabs apart and watch her body bleed again. 

Eventually they say she has schizophrenia. They say she hears things and sees things that aren't there -- but no matter what they say, she knows she's not sick. She's not crazy. She's just different, she's always been different, she's always felt different, one step to the side of everyone else, trying to keep up, trying to fit in, but nothing ever works. She's scared her parents throughout the years, she knows that but can't help it. She smells blood and it makes her stop and look for that rich, copper-iron liquid, licking her lips no matter how many times she tells herself not to. She can't help the fascination she has for knives, for sharp and shiny things, even for dull and rusted things, sometimes, the way they slice and chop and sometimes catch on skin, cut things open and make them fall apart and show her their insides. 

She starts seeing a therapist when she's six, goes through a string of them those first few years. She hasn't really done anything yet, by that point; she's not cutting, she's not killing, she's not even stroking knives when she sees them in stores. She's just watching nature documentaries. Her parents are strict with her -- she can't blame them, not when she knows what she thinks about, sometimes -- and documentaries are the only things her parents let her watch apart from educational or religious programming. She's fascinated -- not because of the animals or insects, exactly, definitely not because of mating habits or the instincts the young seem to be born with, but the way they hunt: the large cats stalk and pounce; the spiders draw their webs, luring in their victims; the way that things of all sizes hide and attack or disguise themselves and trick their prey. 

She thinks maybe she was born wrong, not sick the way they say but that she should have been one of those animals, free to attack if she wants to use her teeth, free to drink down blood and then doze in the heat of the afternoon sun. Something is wrong with her but it's not that she's sick. It's that she's different -- and there are times she thinks that makes her better than everyone else. 

They commit her for a year when she turns thirteen because her mother catches her skinning a cat in the back yard. She hadn't killed it -- the cat was already dead, hit by a car in the street or something -- but she picked it up and took it to the back of the house where no one could see her. She got a couple knives from the kitchen then slowly peeled back the fur to see the flesh and muscles underneath, inside. It's more of a dissection than anything; it's already dead so she can't watch it bleed and hear it scream in the face of a more dangerous predator. She wants to know what's inside, what's different about the guts and viscera of a cat from her own. Her mother was worried, though, and in retrospect -- well, she can't really blame her parents for being worried. It's not something normal kids do, after all, and no one else seems to realise that she's better than that. 

No one at the institute is quite sure how to take her. She's not visibly crazy like the other kids; she doesn't sit and stare at the walls, she doesn't laugh maniacally at jokes no one else can hear, she doesn't talk to people that aren't there. She just watches everything with slightly narrowed eyes and sometimes, when they feed her, she holds the plastic knife in her hand and looks at it a little too closely, tries to catch her reflection in the blade but there is no blade and there is no reflection here. It's like she doesn't exist, not without being able to see herself in something deadly, and she hates that feeling. She wants everyone to know that she's there, that she's alive, that she's real -- and then the men come. 

She's been in the institute one-year-minus-seven-weeks. She's almost fourteen now; she's tall, she's had her first period. She feels like she's not quite sure she fits in her skin, the way it is now -- all these unfamiliar curves and angles throw her off when she gets dressed in the morning or strips to shower. It's hers, though, her skin, her flesh, her blood, and soon enough it'll all make sense to her, she has to have faith in that or she'll go mad, have to split herself apart and look inside to remind herself she exists. 

Twice a day, so goes outside to garden. One of the shrinks says it'll give her a chance to calm, to connect to the earth, to feel soil between her fingers like that's going to quiet the raging need inside for all of the filthy things she wants: flesh between her teeth and blood in her mouth, guts full of undigested food and a still-beating heart under the light press of her fingertips, piss and shit and everything that makes a person up smeared on her skin and in her nose.

She doesn't hear the men first, she feels them. She can _smell_ them, thinks it's her imagination because it smells exactly how she thinks home would smell: burning ozone, the electric power of blood on fire. Her throat is dry but her mouth waters. She sits up, looks over her shoulder, sees them, the way they're standing. They're both wearing jeans, t-shirts, muddy, broken-in boots. There's nothing special about the way they look until she meets their eyes -- their eyes are different. 

Their eyes are beautiful. 

The taller one has golden eyes the shade of grassland cats, full and sated, sleeping in the heat with blood drying on their muzzles. His eyes shine with contentment, that and the slightest hint of dispassionate curiosity, but he looks like he doesn't care that much, really, about anything. 

Except then she sees him reach out two fingers, touch the wrist of the man standing next to him. She follows the action, trails her eyes up that wrist, up the arm, across the shoulder, to his neck and then his face and this man -- oh, this man. She knows this man right down to bone. The look in his eyes, it's an expression of the same thing she feels deep inside, the one she tries to hide from everyone else. He looks at her, though, and he knows, he understands, he _gets_ it. His eyes are green, such a gorgeous green, but they're manic, they're glittering, they're hungry, and she knows he's hungry for the same things that she is but he's older, settled. She wonders if it's because of the man standing next to him, still touching him with the lightest brush-glance of fingers, or if he's learned to deal with it in some way she has yet to find. 

She wipes her hands off on her jeans and stands up, looks at them both. 

"How do you feel about kids?" the shorter one says. 

"Kids," she says. "What kind of kids?" 

The shorter one smiles and it makes his eyes light up. "Well, Coop's almost four, so -- four-year-old kids. Obnoxiously smart and foul-mouthed four-year-old kids."

She frowns, asks, "Coop?" 

That's when the tall one moves forward. "Cooper," he says. Her eyes catch on the line of his cheekbones as he says, "We adopted him about a year ago and he needs a big sister. We thought brother for a long time but he's insisted on a sister, so." 

"Are you kidnapping me to be a babysitter?" she asks, eyebrow raised and arms folded across her chest. "Really?" 

"Not exactly," the shorter one says. "We have babysitters out the yazoo, kid." 

She snaps, "Don't call me that," because every doctor she's ever had has called her kid, kiddo, like it's going to make her like them, like it's going to make her soft and weak like all of the other people her age, all of the other children who don't understand -- who will never understand. 

"All right," he says, easy shrug of his shoulders like her anger doesn't bother him and her tone doesn't irritate him. "What should I call you, then?" 

She opens her mouth and closes it just as quickly. No one's ever asked that before -- what she wants to be called rather than what her name is -- and it's a subtle distinction but one that rings true with her. 

"I don't know," she says. "Not yet. I'll need to think about it." 

The shorter one says, "Cool. My name's Dean, this is Sam. And you, no matter what your name is, don't fit here, do you." 

She takes a step backwards. No one's ever said it that bluntly, sure, but no one's ever said it with the same glitter-gleam in their eyes that she has, either. "Yeah," she says, licks her lips to give them some moisture back with how suddenly dry they've gone. "But I don't know -- what's it to you?" 

"Like I said," Dean says, "we got a kid and he needs a big sister. We think maybe you'd fit right in with our messed-up little family." 

"Messed-up family," she echoes. 

Dean grins, wide, and it's so _beautiful_ , so free and loose and easy like he knows that he can do anything he wants -- like he can get away with anything. Maybe it's because of the man next to him, maybe not, but she aches to feel the same way he sounds. "Yup. Family, and we're just about as fucked up as one can get; thankfully we don't live here or we'd probably be in the same kind of situation you are. Worse, actually. Y'see, Sam's my brother but we've been fuckin' for a long time. Coop's not ours; he killed his parents and we brought him home with us. None of us are what you'd call 'well-adjusted:' Sam likes to wear skirts sometimes, Coop swears more than a sailor and he's a fucking good shot with a gun for being so young, and I like to tear things apart with my bare hands." 

"Where do you live?" she asks, all she can think to ask as his words run through her mind, as she takes them apart as carefully as she's taken apart butterflies and moths before. Incest doesn't really matter, she guesses, if it's consensual, and people wear all kinds of weird things these days, a guy in a skirt isn't the most outlandish thing she's ever heard of. A three-year-old killing his parents, though -- there has to be a story there. 

"Hell," Dean says. 

For a moment, she wants to laugh, except then she realises he's completely serious, no glint of humour or teasing in those blood-hungry eyes. "Hell," she echoes, faint at the thought. It's not fear making her heart race or her palms sweaty, not at all. It's the thought of demons, blood, torture, pain, _death_ , what she might learn, what she might be free to do. She clears her throat, asks, "Does that mean you're demons?" 

"I am," Dean says, and his eyes flash black. "Sammy's a little different. He's the king, that's why he's got the gold eyes. Sometimes they even turn white; it's pretty hot, actually." 

She looks between them, eyes wide, one of the first moments of honest shock she's ever felt. It's a strange freeing, like she's falling and may never hit bottom. If they were anyone else, she'd hide the way she's feeling but they've been so up-front and honest with her and she thinks that maybe, for the first time, she's on the verge of an answer as to where she belongs, as to why she's different. 

"You want to take me to hell," she says, "to be your daughter, even though you're brothers, and to be the big sister to a kid who killed his parents when he was still young enough to count his age on one hand and have fingers left over. Why me?" 

"Why not?" Sam asks. 

She looks at him, meets those golden eyes, feline in colour and shape both. "Okay," she says, unwilling to disagree with Sam past a certain point; Dean might be the one doing most of the talking but Sam's the king of hell, he's the one with power. "But you have to have a reason, demons or not. Why'd you pick _me_?" 

Dean takes a couple steps forward, reaches behind him and pulls a knife from his jeans. He offers it to her handle-first, blade in his hand like he doesn't have a care as to whether or not he cuts himself or she cuts him by taking the knife too fast, too slow, at an unexpected angle. She can't take her eyes off it; the knife is different from anything she's ever seen. The handle's made from bone -- the whole thing is made from bone, a jawbone, judging by the teeth still rooted into it. She wants to take it from Dean so badly, it's _calling_ her, and her fingers twitch at her sides, hands clenching into fists to keep them from reaching out. 

"Go on," Dean says, gently. "See if you can take it." 

"This some kind of test?" she asks. "What, you gonna King Arthur me into taking that and becoming princess of hell?" 

Sam laughs, says, "We only need a princess if you wanna be one. Dean 'nd I are gonna be around forever." 

"But it'd be nice to round out the family a little," Dean says, and she gets, then, that family is something precious to Dean, something sacred, as holy as anything could ever be to a demon. "It'd be fucking delightful to have someone around that I can take out sometimes, have a little fun with while Sam's at home with Coop. Go on. Take the knife." 

She can't tear her eyes from it. She steps closer, doesn't even realise she has until she's starting to reach out. The closer her fingers get to the knife, the more the blood inside of her thrums with want, with need, with a desperate, fierce desire to take the knife and kill everyone. It's not the first time she's felt like this but it is the strongest and something about that knife, about these men and what they're offering, is pulling that up, pulling that out of her, stretching out the tight coil of desire she's buried so far down that she thought, maybe, someday, she could pretend it wasn't even there. Now, here, close to knife, close to these men, it is so, so strong. 

Before she knows what's happening, her fingers are sliding along the knife and then it's in her hand. Everything inside of her is screaming and then she realises it's not inside of her, it's out loud, spilling out wanting-wild into the air. It's not a scream of pain, it's a scream of homecoming. This is where she belongs, holding the knife, and she's never really thought about kids before but she guesses she doesn't mind a little brother, one that might actually feel the same way about other people that she does. It might not be so bad; he's almost four so she won't have to worry about diapers and he's old enough to listen and understand. 

"Okay," she says, gripping the knife tight and unwilling to give it back. "Say you're right. Say I do come with you. Will I have to become a demon?" 

Sam's the one who answers this time, says, "No, not a demon, not unless you want to. Otherwise, you'll stay human -- but we will have to change you enough to survive hell. Enough to make sure everyone there knows that you belong to us, that you're of _us_ and not a normal human there for the racks." 

She blinks at him, at the white flash of his eyes, and says, "Racks," mind stuck on that word. 

"Racks," Dean says, like he can read the currents of her mind with ease, the way they've flown through ideas of what that's like, how people are stretched out, what might be done to them. "Torture," and she almost expects to see blood on his teeth when he grins at her. "Like I said," he tells her, "someone I can go out and have a little fun with while Sam stays at home with Coop and takes care of the boring shit." 

She meets Dean's eyes, lets the hunger flow through her unbound, lets her hunger meet his. She smiles and she means it for the first time in her life. "What's it gonna take?" she asks. 

Sam gives her a smile, slight and sad, and says, "An infinite second of pain. More than you've ever felt before, more than you'll ever feel again. But then it's over. You'll belong to us and to hell and you'll be able to do anything you want." 

"Okay," she tells them. "Call me Diana."


End file.
